I remember reading an article somewhere about how interconnected the world is, and how fragile that makes us. Because all countries are dependant on all other countries. And different parts of countries are dependant on other parts of the same, or other countries. So if one small part of a country goes wrong, it could plunge the whole world into chaos.

As a general rule, the more efficient society is, the more sensitive it is to totally falling apart.

There's a such thing called a global economy. So its not surprising at all.

I never said surprising, I said interesting. But now that you mention it, a lot of people are surprised, because in every other crisis, the extremely poor were usually no better or worse off. People thought this would only become greater as economies like India and China developed and generated domestic demand, but this has proven to not be the case.

However what is surprising is everyone getting into the frame of mind its all the United States fault.

A few other countries participated in it, but all the unusual securities and business models that created this crisis were created in America. They may have only been by far the largest player of many involved in the crisis, but they certainly invented it. I think it's only fair they get more of the blame then.

But consider it this way, if America wasn't the most important country in the world, they wouldn't be getting all the blame.

There's a such thing called a global economy. So its not surprising at all.

However what is surprising is everyone getting into the frame of mind its all the United States fault.

it was. US banking companies were deregulated to sell securites so what they did was bundle up all these loans into securites packages and sell them to companies overseas for cash in return. long story short, the payments faulted and everyone was stuck with egg on their faces.

They did play the biggest part in the issue, and the ignition for the crisis was in the states. Other countries played a part but the biggest part of the blame does reside within th U.S.

Wait...what are you talking about...do you even know how the crisis arose? The banks. America does not control all of the banks in the world. The crisis is a bank crisis (well, a hedge fund crisis, but nonetheless,) and it was greed, not jut in the US, but around the world that put us into this shithole where we will sit for a very long time.

But, some things are very prominent. America the leading country, and when it sneezes, the whole world will start to get sick.

They did play the biggest part in the issue, and the ignition for the crisis was in the states. Other countries played a part but the biggest part of the blame does reside within th U.S.

That's actually wrong. The root of the problem is the fact that Americans, Brits and Australians (although Australia is too small to matter on a global scale) quite simply spent more money than they made over the past years. So they kept racking up personal debt.

That, in itself, isn't a problem as it's between the bank the the consumer. If the bank threw their money out the window to people who weren't creditworthy to begin with, the bank will just collapse. End of story.
Unfortunately, the banks had the clever idea to sell the risk of the loans they had given out, or the entire loans, to other investors on the capital markets as Asset Backed Securities (ABS). Same instrument taht was used to sell mortgages to other investors and caused the current financial crisis.
And evidently, Americans (and Brits) are great salespeople because they convinced investors all over the planet to buy those securities even though they, themselves, couldn't say for sure how much they were worth. And now that Americans and Brits default on their loans investors from all over the world find their securities worthless and thus don't have any money to spend on other stuff, causing the global economy to crash.

In essence:
Americans+Brits = smart, for convincing foreign investors to give them money that they won't get back now
foreign investors = stupid for buying securities they didn't understand.

So, the root of the problem lies within the U.S. and the UK, but somehow I doubt that people there really feel ashamed for what they've done The only problem is that the foreign investors will be more careful in the future...which is quite evident from the fact that £1 = €1 nowadays.

Wait...what are you talking about...do you even know how the crisis arose? The banks. America does not control all of the banks in the world. The crisis is a bank crisis (well, a hedge fund crisis, but nonetheless,) and it was greed, not jut in the US, but around the world that put us into this shithole where we will sit for a very long time.

America controls American banks through regulation, and they should have never been allowed to do what they did in the first place. This was a failure of regulation, the greed of bankers, and a public that sold itself out for easy money. The entire country was involved somehow, from government to business to individuals. They are no doubt collectively the inventor and biggest player of this disaster. So yes, put a lot of blame on America.

It's also interesting to note that historically Canadian banks have been much less regulated than American ones, at least until 1999. Yet, our banks never created these complex banking scams. I'm not going to say it's just a difference in attitude. Perhaps the smaller scale of Canadian banks meant they had a better understanding of the ground-level loan making. Perhaps it's because our government never sponsored the securitization of mortgages with a Fanny May or Freddie Mac type organization. Perhaps it's because we use the Scottish model of a few large banks controlling 90% of the market, instead of the English one America shares with thousands of small banks and the few large ones controlling less than 10% of the market. Perhaps it's because we are close enough to America to know that subprime was a scam all along. Certainly, the American banks knew. Of course, our banks arn't 100% innocent either. We had our ABCP meltdown, and our banks got involved in sub-prime eventually, if only very late in the game. Either way, our banks are still rock solid, and I can still get loans, so I'm happy to be here.